scale
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
skaylIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈskeɪl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The ratio between the size of something and a representation of it
An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement; means of assigning a magnitude.
The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
Size; scope.
A device to measure mass or weight.
Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
verb
transitive
To change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion; especially to change a process in order to produce much larger amounts of the final product.
transitive
To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
intransitive
To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.
transitive
To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
transitive
To climb to the top of.
Measure with or as if with scales
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
Used this way, scale is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It stays understated rather than dramatic. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Mild
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use scale
- “Judging on a scale of 1 to 10.”noun
- “They entertained on a grand scale.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The act of arranging in a graduated series.
An electronic pulse counter used to count pulses that occur too rapidly to be recorded individually.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Capable of being scaled.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An ordered reference standard.
Increase proportionally.
A value on some scale of measurement.
Partly refined paraffin wax.
A ladder used to scale walls (as in an attack).
Reduce proportionally.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Of or relating to a musical scale.
Toothless mammal of southern Africa and Asia having a body covered with horny scales and a long snout for feeding on ants and termites.
A fungus with a scaly cap and white flesh and a ring on the stalk (with scales below the ring).
A gilled fungus with a cap and stalk that are conspicuously scaly with upright scales.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: ratio between the size of something and a representation of it
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.